


Soulmates

by pylades



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Gen, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 17:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pylades/pseuds/pylades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, yeah, Crutchie. He believes in soulmates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soulmates

Soulmates.

It wasn’t a topic of conversation that came up in the boarding house with any frequency. When you spent your days tryin’ to make enough money to pay for the lumpy mattress under your back at night and a bit of food in your belly, a fella didn’t have the time left to worry about meeting the person that fate chose for them to spend their days with.

It did come up, though.

The other fellows were pretty much split on the topic. Romeo, not surprisingly, believed (and swore that he flirted with all the girls that he did because ‘a guy’s gotta have some fun before he meets the one’.)

Race thought the idea was ridiculous and not worthy of discussion.

Crutchie, though, Crutchie wanted to believe it was true. His face got that stupid earnest look that made Jack want to smile and hate his friend all at the same time. It was a look that made it impossible for Jack to ignore him or stay out of the debate. He’d do anything to keep it on the other boy’s face.

"Whaddayou think, Jack? Do you think we’ve all got someone meant for us? And it don’t matter if you ain’t got no money or yer a crip or ya hawk papes for a livin’?"

And he wasn’t just tryin’ to make Crutchie feel better when he said that he believed. Because he did.

(“There are two kinds o’ soulmates, you see. There’s the matin’ of the soul that happens between a man and a woman, but also between a ma and her boy, Jack. I’ve been lucky, my lad, for I’ve had both in my life.”)

When he was a little kid - before his Ma died and everything went to hell - he listened to her tales with the fascination of a boy who loved stories. His Ma had spent her first nineteen years in a small Irish village and her bedtime stories were full o’ magic and lore. Her favorite story, though, was about her soulmate.

(“The other girls in m’village knew their mates when we were all young. And there I was, fast approachin’ the time when a girl might be called old maid, and no man to be had. When the chance came to leave, I jumped at it -“)

She’d stroked his hair and he curled up against her in the small bed that they all shared and told him all about that long trip to New York. How sick she’d been on the boat, how hungry and weak she felt as she carefully rationed the small amount of food she’d carried away from home with her.

\- And then she’d met his Pa after stepping off the boat and her pain and misery disappeared, replaced by another feeling - 

(“It was like all o’ the air left m’body, Jacky boy. They say it’s different for everyone, but that’s how I knew -“)

The year that he turned eight, she started coughing.

And the coughs turned into wheezes.

And those turned into pained chokes that left the flannel cloth she carried flecked with blood.

When she was put in the rough-hewn box and interred into the ground, Jack was sure that he felt exactly what his Ma had when she met his father. All of the air left his body and he nearly fell -

There’d be no more talk of his Ma’s Irish foolishness, his Pa had warned Jack. He’d abided her stories for too many years and he wouldn’t have Jack believing in them. It wasn’t real.

Believing helped, though. It helped him get through those early days selling papes, getting’ roughed up by older newsboys. On those days, he pictured the lovely woman with dark auburn hair and an Irish lilt to her voice.

Picturin’ her made his chest burn, but it helped when his Pa didn’t come home and Jack was turned out of their tenement apartment. It helped to imagine her holding him tight on the nights when he’s cold and lonely.

But time passes and the picture in his head fades. Life becomes all about papes and lies and survivin’. The next time he feels anything like that breathless, happy feeling is when Jack picks up a battered novel one of the other newsboys left behind in the boarding house.

When he closes his eyes, he pictures the city described in the book - a city made of clay. A home of his own that isn’t dirty and full of angry, bitter people strugglin’ to make it. Beautiful sunsets streakin’ across a sky so big that it goes on forever.

And his chest, he can’t breathe. It’s that same feeling his Ma had described. When he thinks of Santa Fe, the pain and fear and hunger disappear.

Santa Fe is enough for him. He holds that picture closer and tighter than he ever held the picture of his Ma, because he can’t (won’t) let it disappear like she did.

(And then he sees her in the street, on the arm of some clean and rich-lookin’ dandy, and Jack’s entire body freezes.)

(He can’t breathe. He can’t -)

(She’s prettier than any sunset in Santa Fe.)

(And when she smarts off at him, their eyes meet, and he knows that she feels it too.)

So, yeah, Crutchie. He believes in soulmates.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in fall 2014 for the newsies writing swap on tumblr!


End file.
